The nonlinear processes of frequency conversion such as second harmonic generation (SHG) usually obey certain selection rules, resulting from the preservation of different kinds of physical quantities, e.g. the angular momentum. For the SHG created by a monolayer of transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) such as WS2, the valley-exciton locked selection rule predicts an SHG signal in the cross-polarization state. By combining plasmonic nanostructures with a monolayer of TMDC, a hybrid metasurface is realized, which affects this nonlinear process because of an additional polarization conversion process. Here, we observe that the plasmonic metasurface modifies the light-matter interaction with the TMDC, resulting in an SHG signal that is co-polarized with respect to the incident field, which is usually forbidden for the monolayers of TMDC. We fabricate such hybrid metasurfaces by placing plasmonic nanorods on top of a monolayer WS2 and study the valley-exciton locked SHG emission from such system for different parameters, such as wavelength and polarization. Furthermore, we show the potential of the hybrid metasurface for tailoring nonlinear processes by adding additional phase information to the SHG signal using the Pancharatnam-Berry phase effect. This allows direct tailoring of the SHG emission to the far-field.

The C-type lectin receptor langerin plays a vital role in the mammalian defense against invading pathogens. Its function hinges on the affinity to its co-factor Ca2+ which in turn is regulated by the pH. We studied the structural consequences of pro-tonating the allosteric pH-sensor histidine H294 by molecular dynamics simulations (total simulation time: about 120 μs) and Markov models. We discovered a mechanism in which the signal that the pH has dropped is transferred to the Ca2+-binding site without transferring the initial proton. Instead, protonation of H294 unlocks a conformation in which a protonated lysine side-chain forms a hydrogen bond with a Ca2+-coordinating aspartic acid. This destabilizes Ca2+ in the binding pocket, which we probed by steered molecular dynamics. After Ca2+-release, the proton is likely transferred to the aspartic acid and stabilized by a dyad with a nearby glutamic acid, triggering a conformational transition and thus preventing Ca2+-rebinding.